


electric hammer to the heart

by jatp_flynn (my_cabbagessss)



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28130010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_cabbagessss/pseuds/jatp_flynn
Summary: Alex and Reggie are shopping at Five Below, though Alex's eyes keep wandering to a certain cute guy.
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Kudos: 117





	electric hammer to the heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Now or Never
> 
> The idea for the meet-cute came from my late night shopping at Five Below with my sister. This actually happened to her, but she didn't end op getting the girl's number. 
> 
> All the bits in here about Alex's anxiety come from my personal experience, and they are things that I actually do because of my own anxiety.
> 
> Enjoy!

Alex wasn’t expecting to see a cute guy walk by him at Five Below that day, but it happened. 

He was out with Reggie to get small Christmas gifts for their friends. Reggie had wandered off to a different part of the store, leaving Alex to contemplate what to buy for everyone by himself. 

Alex had been in one of the small aisles when the guy brushed by while muttering a small and gruff “excuse me.” Alex had frozen up a bit and took a slight step forward so he was uncomfortably close to the shelf, not wanting to be in the person’s way. 

And, when the sound of the guy’s footsteps weren’t right near him anymore, Alex glanced over at him and his jaw had almost dropped. The guy was a few inches shorter that Alex, with brown hair falling just a bit past his shoulders. Alex’s jaw almost dropped at the sight of the stranger, with his dark brown eyes and appealing face. 

The guy looked at Alex too, and a carefree smile formed on the stranger’s face, so Alex quirked up the corners of his mouth into what he hoped wasn’t awkward-looking. The guy looked away and continued walking away, and Alex stared at the same box of gel pens for at least a minute going in circles is his mind about how he just made a complete fool of himself, then assuring himself that he’ll never see the guy again so it doesn’t matter, then ending up getting nowhere because no matter how much he reassures himself nothing helps. 

Alex (eventually) tears his eyes away from the box of gel pens and looks in other places throughout the store for presents. 

Fifteen minutes later, Alex had gotten small knick-knacks and presents for each of his friends. He was currently scanning the store for Reggie’s raven hair or red flannel. His eyes had kept finding the cute guy that had passed by him, and it did nothing to help him focus on the task of finding his friend. 

“Hey, Alex!” He heard behind him, and Alex turned around to see Reggie standing there with his arms full of small gifts. 

“Reggie, hi,” Alex said after getting over the shock of his friend coming up behind him and startling him like that. “You know, they have carriages or baskets that you could use to hold all of that.”

“Yeah,” Reggie says, walking in front of Alex and towards the register, not waiting to make sure that Alex was following him. “I had already picked up a few things when I realized that, so I just didn’t grab one.”

“Okay, Reg,” Alex says, amused at his friend’s line of logic.

They two get into the line and wait, Reggie picking up a pack of M&Ms from the shelf of candy next to them. Shortly thereafter, one of the people at the registers calls out that they can take whomever’s next. Alex looks to Reggie, and Reggie just gestures that Alex can go ahead. 

He walks to the register marked with a three that the person who had called out from, and puts the items he wants to get down on the counter. While the cashier scans his assortment of items, Alex gets his wallet out of his back packet. He pulls a twenty dollar bill and a five dollar bill from the wallet and hands it to the cashier when they’re done scanning the items and had pressed a few buttons on the monitor at the register to finalize his purchase. 

Alex glances at the other registers and notices that Reggie was placing what he got from the store onto the counter. Alex took the bag that contained his purchases from the store and turned away from the register and took a step forward. 

As he took the step, Alex’s shoulder collided with someone else’s and he immediately apologized without looking at the person.

“I’m so sorry, that was totally my fault,” Alex hears, and his eyes dart to the person’s face and he suddenly realizes that it’s the cute guy that had walked by him earlier. 

The store is packed, and Alex really doesn’t have the time to admire the same carefree smile that he had seen on the guy’s face earlier, so he gestures with his hand and says, “You can go ahead.”

“No,” the guy says. “I was in your way, you can go.”

Alex isn’t going to stand there and go back and forth with the guy (though he really wants to), so Alex just nods, smiles, and walks to the door. He only waits a few seconds, thirty max, for Reggie to meet him at the door. 

“So,” Reggie starts, and Alex can tell where this conversation is going to go by the way Reggie holds the ‘o’ in the word. “Who was that guy you bumped into?”

“No one, Reggie,” Alex responds. He’s split between gushing about the handsome stranger to his friend and completely dismissing the notion because no matter how long the two of them had been friends, Alex’s anxiety could never actually let him do something without overthinking it and worrying about any person’s reaction. 

“Come on Alexander it’s obvious that you thought that he was cute,” Reggie says, and Alex just ignores him, choosing not to say anything in response. 

After a moment of silence, Reggie says, “He’s not my type, but I can see why you would like him.”

And then Alex is laughing, and so is Reggie. When the two calm down from laughing so much, Alex responds to his friend, saying, “Fine. Yeah, I think he’s cute, but it’s not like I’ll ever see him again. So, what does it matter?”

Reggie just shakes his head and opens the passenger door to Alex’s mom’s car that she let him borrow for this outing. Alex is about to do the same, but he feels a tap on his shoulder before he can do so. 

He turns around and there’s the cute guy from the store. Alex is dumbstruck, but the guy doesn’t seem to notice because he’s just talking. 

“Hey, um, my name is William, but people call me Willie,” Willie takes a pause. “You’re really cute, so here’s my number.”

Willie hands Alex a small piece of paper with a string of numbers on it and a smiley face. 

Alex is still speechless, now at the fact that the guy had actually given him his number. 

“I’m just gonna… walk away now,” Willie says awkwardly. He turns and starts to walk away, then Alex breaks out of his stupor and calls after Willie. 

“I’ll text you later.”

Alex didn’t expect to get a cute guy’s number that day, but he did.


End file.
